iLife Questions

I am finally able to spend some time exploring iLife on my 'new' (May) Mac. I am very impressed with all the tools but I have run into some serious questions that seaching here and apple's forums have yield little to confusiong answers.

I would appreciate an insight from those here that are use iLife for sharing photos and video.

1. iPhoto Slideshows. I created a photo album and put pictures in it. I then clicked on slideshow and added music and played with the effects. Ok, so now what? It wont upload to iWeb (iWeb does seem to offer a slideshow option through any photo page but it is plain vanilla slideshow without all the cool stuff that iPhoto offers. I can share with iDvd or export to iDvd. So am I right that iPhoto slideshows are only good for a dvd copy to give to people? Is it better to use iMovie or iDvd to create a slideshow instead of iPhoto?

2. iMovie has 6 themes. iDvd has way more. Am I wrong to assume that iMovie is the program to create movies (which i copied from my mini-dv camcorder) and iDvd is the program to just burn them? What is the best option to do something create with my movies and photos?

3. Are their any know online tutorials that a noob like myself could take advantage of to learn what I can do with my photos and movies. I am really confused at this point. I have tried alot of things and end up spending 2 hours clicking around but dont have any end result. Very frustrating.

1. iPhoto Slideshows. I created a photo album and put pictures in it. I then clicked on slideshow and added music and played with the effects. Ok, so now what?

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You could also export as a Quicktime movie, and then upload that to the movies section of iWeb. I've done this and it works fine.

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2. iMovie has 6 themes. iDvd has way more. Am I wrong to assume that iMovie is the program to create movies (which i copied from my mini-dv camcorder) and iDvd is the program to just burn them? What is the best option to do something create with my movies and photos?

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iMovie is indeed the creation software you should use for movies, then you can export that to iDVD to create menus, navigation points, all that kind of thing. You can also include photos in iMovie, to break up video segments, complete with audio and titling effects.

You could also export as a Quicktime movie, and then upload that to the movies section of iWeb. I've done this and it works fine.

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Thanks for the response. I tried that last night but iWeb gave me a warning about the size of the file and the time it would take others to view. It was 27 photos with music for about 100mb.

Is compression best done on the frontend (ie. reduce the size/quality of the photos. what is the best way to do this with apps included on Mac or freeware?) or on the backend (ie. different compression?)

I suppose you could reduce the framerate of the quicktime movie, since you're essentially replicating your photos every x amount of seconds to make it into a movie. Try tweaking the settings to see how low in terms of resolution and rate still looks good, but I'm not too surprised by the file size. You could try reducing the size of the images in the original slideshow as well, either by converting to jpegs or png files, and/or reducing the actual physical size as well.

iMovie themes are similar in look and feel to iDVD themes but they are different animals. iMovie themes are just fancy motion graphics that you can add to your movie to give it a more professional look. Just like when you watch the local news and they have all those fancy animated logos for different segements like sports and weather. iDVD themes are used for the menus of your DVD.

It's a bit of a pain, but here is one way to get your iPhoto slideshow out to the other apps.

1. Create the slideshow in iPhoto, add the music and transistions/effects that you want.

2. Send the slideshow to iDVD, it should create a QuickTime Movie (.mov) file of your slide show. I'm not sure where it puts it but it shouldn't be too hard to find.

3. Open iMovie. Create a new project. Find the .Mov file from above and drag it into your timeline. Feel free to add other effects/titles/iMovie Themes, etc. You could also just add the music here in iMovie instead of iPhoto. I think you have to add it in iMovie if you want more than one song but I'm not sure about that.

4. In iMovie go to Share. Select how/where you want to share this iMovie. You should be able to select iWeb or just export a QuickTime movie with smaller settings for web steaming.

iMovie themes are similar in look and feel to iDVD themes but they are different animals. iMovie themes are just fancy motion graphics that you can add to your movie to give it a more professional look. Just like when you watch the local news and they have all those fancy animated logos for different segements like sports and weather. iDVD themes are used for the menus of your DVD.

It's a bit of a pain, but here is one way to get your iPhoto slideshow out to the other apps.

1. Create the slideshow in iPhoto, add the music and transistions/effects that you want.

2. Send the slideshow to iDVD, it should create a QuickTime Movie (.mov) file of your slide show. I'm not sure where it puts it but it shouldn't be too hard to find.

3. Open iMovie. Create a new project. Find the .Mov file from above and drag it into your timeline. Feel free to add other effects/titles/iMovie Themes, etc. You could also just add the music here in iMovie instead of iPhoto. I think you have to add it in iMovie if you want more than one song but I'm not sure about that.

Click to expand...

I agree with most of your reply. iMovie for editing, adding music etc and iDVD for creating menus etc. for a nice looking DVD. You can create photo slideshows from iMovie or iDVD, but iPhoto is much easier. A few additions:

2. Share-> iDVD is to export your iPhoto slideshow as a high quality .mov file. It will be placed in your personal "Movies" folder. Unfortunately, it will also start iDVD as well, but just close it without saving, you don't need it for now. (You could probably use "Export" to get a similar quality .mov, but I am not sure what settings to use, so I just follow this method.)

3. Yes, if you need more than one song during a slideshow, you need to add it through iMovie. Just create your iPhoto slideshow without music, then do the rest in iMovie. You can even click View->Show audio levels so that you can fade out a song, then fade in another. Try the "Help" button if you feel confused iLife help sections are quite useful.

If you want to make a DVD out of your collections of slideshow movies, just start iDVD and select the "Media" pane of the "browser" on the right hand. As long as your iMovie projects are placed in the Movies folder or in subfolders under that, iDVD can import it very easily. You don't have to export your iMovie project at all.

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